Say this for our mad king: No one makes news faster. Herewith one stupefied observer’s takeaways from the Dawn of the Donald.
Every Day Is Opposite Day
As we acclimate to the alternative facts factory they’re running at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., we can begin to make sense of the world according to our new president.
In light of his insistence, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that his Inauguration Day crowds were the biggest ever, and that only voter fraud can account for his having lost the popular vote, we now know that when Trump says his immigration restrictions are “working out very nicely,” it means they’ve been a total fiasco. When one of his spokesmen says some immigrants have been “inconvenienced” by the restrictions, it means their lives have been turned upside down.
Is This Man Even Sane?
Trump’s whining about crowd size and vote totals and unfair news coverage has many writers questioning the man’s psychic equilibrium. Watching his visit to CIA headquarters reminded me of the song “Rose’s Turn” from the musical “Gypsy” — “a nervous breakdown set to music,” as one critic calls it.
I also thought of the abusive stepfather in the film “This Boy’s Life.” When the mother and son finally work up the gumption to leave him, the stepfather, played by Robert De Niro, calls after them, pathetically and repeatedly, “What about me? What about me?”
Slouching Towards Fascism
Let this sink in: The CEO of Exxon is about to become America’s top diplomat.
Or this: We have no way of knowing whether Trump’s foreign policy decisions will be motivated by what’s good for the United States or what’s good for the Trump Organization.
As for those slapdash and grossly discriminatory immigration restrictions, even Dick Cheney thinks Trump has gone too far.
Such is the power of the American presidency, though, that we can watch our democracy slip away from us and do nothing to stop it.
The Bright Side I: Save the News Media!
Demagogic attacks on the press are nothing new, but Trump and his minions have cranked it up a notch. First there was the president saying he was in a “running war” with the news media. Then there was his press secretary, Sean Spicer, fulminating about dishonesty in the media. And then there was Steve Bannon, the rottenest fruit in Trump’s basket of deplorables, saying the media was “the opposition party.”
A satisfying result of these attacks is that the press, for a change, is being viewed as the bullied rather than as the bully. People are awakening to the fact that the biggest press bashers are those who have the most to fear from accurate news coverage.
The Bright Side II: The Great Awakening
Historians tell us that America has seen several Great Awakenings. Those were religious revivals. The enormous turnouts for the Women’s March on Jan. 21 and the protests one week later against the immigration restrictions raise hopes that a great political awakening has begun in response to the hideous ascent of Donald Trump.
The last great political awakening was the age of the Civil Rights, antiwar and environmental movements from the 1960s to the early ‘70s. In each case, the mass outcry forced government and business to change course.
There have been other successful political movements since those days – for gay rights and women’s rights, among others. But we have all been a lot quieter during the past few decades.
One explanation is the Baby Boomers grew up. And with maturity came a narrowing of our interests to our own careers and families.
Or as Cornel West put it during his brilliant talk at Penn State during Martin Luther King Jr. Week, we became more preoccupied with social status and success than with honesty and integrity.
Now along comes Trump, the Mack truck that has knocked us out of our complacency or apathy or whatever it was that kept us on the sidelines.
Those who dismiss marching and chanting and pink hats as empty feel-good exercises underestimate how energizing it is to look around and see that one has allies. None of us can turn the aircraft carrier that is the federal government by ourselves. Now we see that we don’t have to.
Your signature will be one of millions on the petition, your letter to your congressman one in a huge snowdrift of letters, your voice part of a chorus of voices.
We can hope Trump will commit an impeachable offense. We can hope his combativeness will wear him out and he’ll turn the reins of power over to Mike Pence (be careful what you wish for!). But we probably need to play the long game here.
Eventually, possibly as soon as the 2018 mid-term elections, possibly not until 2020, a wave of revulsion will sweep over the electorate and the march toward social and economic justice will resume.
